Where this came from

Five days ago this project was a directory called tw-3002-ai with a README and a dream. The first commit — Initial project scaffolding — landed on April 19 at 2:44 AM. By midnight the same day, we had a terminal-based game with ANSI-art title screens, a sector view, a working market, and local SQLite persistence. Ship creation, trade, combat, NPC chatter — all running in a CLI.

The CLI prototype was fast to build and genuinely fun, but it was single-player. You couldn’t share a galaxy. You couldn’t compete on a leaderboard. The game needed to move to the cloud.

What launched today

The cloud pivot landed in two parts.

First, a Cloudflare Workers API at api.playtradewars.net (now api.tw3002.net). It handles auth, galaxy data, ship state, trade actions, combat resolution, news feeds, and leaderboards — all served from a single Worker backed by D1 (SQLite at the edge). The API is versioned, documented, and rate-limited from day one.

Second, a web client — a Vue 3 single-page app that talks to the API. It renders the sector map, market screen, StarDock upgrades, combat overlays, and navigation log. No install, no terminal, no npm. Just open a browser and play.

The shared galaxy — The Void — was seeded today: 1,000 sectors connected by warp lanes, 150 NPC ships with faction identities, port economies, and danger zones. It’s the same galaxy for every captain. Your trades affect the prices the next captain sees.

Why it matters

A TradeWars-style game is fundamentally about a shared, persistent world. The CLI was a great prototype, but the cloud is where the genre lives. Moving to Workers + D1 means the galaxy runs cheaply, scales globally, and can be iterated on quickly.

The web client removes the biggest barrier to entry. Not everyone wants to install a terminal app. Everyone has a browser.

What’s already here

The API and web client shipped with a surprising amount of depth for day one:

• Three ship classes (Merchant, Scout, Interceptor) with upgrade paths
• Four commodities (ore, organics, equipment, melange) with port-based pricing
• 150 NPC ships across five factions (CHOAM, Fremen, Sardaukar, Guild, Independent) with LLM-driven behavior
• Combat with flee, bribe, and attack options
• News feed tracking kills, deaths, and galaxy events
• Leaderboard ranking by net worth
• Turn regeneration (1 turn per 10 minutes)
• StarDock services for ship upgrades and repair

What’s next

The galaxy is live but bare. The next few days will fill in the systems that make a TradeWars game feel complete: mines, planets, alignment, bounty hunting, and fighter squadrons. The CLI has been a great prototyping tool, but from here forward the focus is the web client and the shared galaxy.

Welcome to The Void, Captain. Try not to fly too close to the Sardaukar.